parent

A parent is a mother or father. Your mom and your dad are your parents, and one of their jobs is to parent you.

We're all born to parents, and many of us also have step parents, foster parents, or adoptive parents who parent us. You might also use parent to talk about plants and animals; maybe your new puppy's parents were dog show champions, for example. Things that act as the source or owner of something else are also parents, like a parent company that owns the local bookshop. The Latin root is parere, "give birth to, produce."